If you haven’t read part one, then start here.
Received a few DM’s and I wanted to say thank you. I’m not sure I could continue with the story without all the supportive messages. If you haven’t read part 1 or part 2 than this won’t make much sense.
Rebecca Redding stayed on my mind the rest of the day and into the evening.
I remember sitting quietly on the couch trying as best I could to sleuth my way about her reasoning for caring so much about Danny Merrick and my time at Fort Worden.
I didn’t say much to my mom when bombarded with questions about my first day of high school. I mostly shrugged and acted as if it had been the same as any other first day— filled with orientations and conversations about what we would be covering in the year ahead.
I could tell there was a glint of worry in my parents eyes at dinner, and for a moment I thought it might be that same old worry that had plagued them in the anxious days after my return from camp.
That I was a killer.
But they knew that wasn’t the case because Danny Merrick had been arrested for the crime already. I ate my mash potatoes wondering if Danny hadn’t been arrested, would their worries that they had raised a deranged lunatic ever have been assuaged?
I went to bed that night thinking of the auburn haired girl. I thought about Danny Merrick too, and wondered what he’d thought to himself as the police rushed in on him, throwing him to the ground and cuffing him.
Thoughts that welcome unpleasant dreams.
I rolled over and shoved my hand beneath the pillow and felt the cold of the untouched covers cool my hand. My window was open but it was a warm night, and I had kicked off the covers. Every now and again a cool autumn breeze would waltz about my room but mostly I was left uncomfortable and hot.
Sleep didn’t come easy that night, and I was partly glad for that. My mind raced, thinking of the tent, Mark, and most importantly that note.
Eventually, I felt my eyes get heavy and begin to fall. I fought them at first, before giving in. I could feel the tension in my body relax, and one of those goosebumps raising winds whistled past my window sill and kissed me good night.
And that’s when I heard it.
The snap of a twig just outside my window.
My eyes shot open.
I felt the pumping of my heart spread the ice cold adrenaline of terror.
I was sure it was just the conjuring of a bad dream worming its way into my half-waking seconds before I fell completely asleep until I heard another twig snap followed by the shuffling of early September leaves.
Sweat erupted all up and down my body, and I wished that I had wrapped myself up in the safety of my blanket despite the warm evening.
I tried to strain my ears to flex the tiny sinew and muscle inside their canals to open them wider and hear more clearly.
For a second I felt as if something monstrous stood atop me. I was too afraid to open my eyes, but I felt as though something big stared down at me, waiting for the moment I showed any sign of life to strike.
I stayed like that, frozen stiff in fear, for what felt to me at the time like hours. I tried to count the seconds, to decide upon some threshold that meant I was safe, but I couldn’t decide if that would be 60 seconds with no sounds outside my window, or 120.
I thought I should scream, I told myself to scream, but I didn’t trust my throat. It felt tight, and unusable, like if I chose to shout for my parents that nothing but whispers and whiny breath would escape me.
Eventually it had been quiet long enough that I felt safe to let one eye open, to peer into my room and out my window and see that I was truly safe.
My eyes felt glued shut despite my dissipating anxiety, but slowly I pried my right eyelid open.
Nothing.
My room was empty.
It was just me.
I inhaled deeply feeling the chains around my chest loosen.
I should get up and look out the window, I thought.
That proved much more difficult as when I went to attempt doing just that, the thought that whatever had been outside my window had slithered in and slipped beneath my bed waiting to bite at my Achilles tendon, and tear at it with sharp teeth.
I lay there tempting whatever lay beneath my bed, dangling my toes just over the side of my mattress. It was with a sharp and silent inhale, an internal war cry, and the momentum of swinging my legs that finally brought them to the ground.
Nothing.
There was nothing under my bed.
I could feel the sweat drying as the threat of the unknown evaporated just slightly.
My room was safe.
But what about outside? What about where the sound of snapping twigs and rustling leaves.
I gripped the side of my mattress, bunching up the duvet cover in my fists, and pushed myself off the bed and towards the window. Step by step the backyard came into view and step by step I saw that there was nothing outside.
The backyard of my childhood home was half an acre of cleared land, with nothing but grass and planted perennials, but from my window the woods were roughly 10 feet away just off to the left side.
I scanned the yard and saw nothing. Finally my shoulders dropped and my back straightened as my body no longer urged me to run. I let out a final sigh of relief and leaned on the window sill breathing in the night air and laughing at myself for being such an idiot.
It was a nice night, I remember the clouds drifting across the nearly full moon, the breeze that smelt like the first fresh rot of leaves, and stillness outside. I had left my copy of “The Outsiders” on my window sill. I grabbed it and flipped the pages feeling them lick my thumb as I leaned out into the night introspectively contemplating my misplaced terror.
Eventually I yawned, and stood up straight while stretching my arms above my head. As I turned away from the window, about to take the first step back towards my bed and sleep, I heard it again.
The sharp snap of a twig.
I felt cold fingers tickle my spine, as I turned back round reflexively and saw a dark figure at the edge of the forest only 10 feet away standing half hidden by bush and tree limbs.
It was watching me.
Just standing, and watching.
I felt bile climb my throat.
It felt like a nightmare. My deepest fear coming to life. All the sleepless nights and nightmares, and running to mommy and daddy justified in a shape of a black humanoid form.
I stood at my window frozen, staring into the woods, and it stood in the woods staring back through my window. It stared straight at me, unmoving.
Whatever it or whoever they were, they hadn’t moved in so long I almost thought they were a mirage in the night. A figment of the dark. Another boogeyman for me to fear. Danny Merrick, the memory of Mark, my own guilt, and now this. I felt myself getting angry, and I gripped the book in my hand, hearing the grit of the pages rubbing against one another.
“Hey!” I shouted at it.
It didn’t move.
“Screw you!” I said I threw the book into the woods.
The paperback crashed into the bush, and without warming the figure jumped forward from the bush falling to the grass. No, falling wasn’t right — it leapt to all fours.
I gasped, and felt a scream catch in my throat. My body betrayed me, just as I knew it had.
The figure on all fours stood lingered just out of the light, and like a cat it stalked me, inching closer slowly.
I could hear the tendons in its arms and legs clicking and popping. It was wound tight, ready to lunge.
Its arms look disjointed, dislocated and misshapen. Its legs jutted from the side like a bug bunched up in the grass with no regard for the functions of a human hip joint.
I had no idea what I was looking at, and as it came closer into the moonlight and out of the shadow I saw it was both a man, and not a man.
Its skin was pale, and its eyes were saucers in its head. Almost human, but slightly too big, and wide. They looked like eyes possessed with hunger.
I couldn’t look away as I took it in trying to make sense of what I was seeing, and then we locked eyes. It was like it was searching for something in me. Waiting to see if I would jump through the window out into my yard down onto all fours like I was the same type of creature.
It was almost dawn, and I could hear my parents waking from their sleep and starting to get ready for work. Would it just wait for them to leave, before it took its almost human mouth and ate my organs?
Somewhere down the street a truck backfired, and it’s head snapped in the direction of the sound, like an animal purely driven by instinct. I swear I could hear its vertebrae rubbing like sandpaper as it extended its neck and turned its head.
Bang!
The truck backfired again, and the pale man-like creature looked at me bearing its teeth.
It let out a screech that sounded like someone trying to speak while breathing in at the same time, before it scuttled off back into the woods. I could hear it crashing against trees and barreling through bushes until it was out of ear shot.
I slammed my window shut, grabbed my blanket and jumped back into bed, throwing the comforter over myself and tucking it in tight around all the edges of my body.
I could smell piss, and felt the warm wet down my leg, but I didn’t move. I lay there, terrified that if I moved, and if I peered back out from beneath my blanket it would be back with its face pressed against my window.
I didn’t know what I had seen, and my brain could barely make sense of the sight of it. It was like hearing a foreign language for the first time, and not even knowing if it was just sounds or words.
My parents were moving up and down the hallway, and I wanted to cry. I wanted to run and hug my mom, but I knew they wouldn’t believe me.
How could they? I didn’t believe myself.
I couldn’t be sure that my mind wasn’t just playing tricks on me.
I didn’t want to be their troubled little child who they’d send away to some sterile mental facility. Of course they’d visit on weekends but eventually those visits would stop and I’d be all alone.
I’m not sure when it happened, but my silent sobbing gave way to sleep.
I didn’t go to school that day.
I just lay in bed thinking of the creature, and about Rebecca, the girl with auburn hair.
I wondered if she would believe me.
I wasn’t sure why but I bet she would.
Thanks again for reading. I’ll update more later this week. As you can tell by now, I wasn’t exaggerating when I said this has all been horribly traumatic for me but it is helping to write it down and unburden myself.
As you can tell by now this is a long story, so I apologize about the long winded nature.
I will continue the story later this week.
EDIT: I’ve just posted part 4… https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/16pau41/monster_of_midway_deeds_of_the_dead/